Kata Tjuta

For our final day in the Red Centre we headed out to Kata Tjuta, or the Olgas, 50 km west of Uluru. It was another chilli, clear day with a very cold wind, which is not ideal for walking along gorges, with rock walls and no sunlight. We also didn't have the energy to do the 4 hr Valley of the Winds walk which also sounded just too bloody freezing, but we walked up to the first lookout to see the orange domed rocks.
The best part about the day was definitely seeing those rocks. Kata Tjuta are not made up of the same course grained sandstone as Uluru as I had expected. Kata Tjuta is made of the biggest conglomerate I have ever seen! Towering up into the sky. With small pebbles up to large boulders measuring half a meter of basalt and granite. Now let's just stop for a minute here and think about the earth surface processes which  made these landforms, stay with me.

Some time, a very long time ago, there was a volcano. Deep in its chamber granite was formed and it then spewed out basalt. Once these rocks had formed, piece of these rocks found themselves in a river, a very fast flowing river, probably flowing down a large mountain, which made them into pebbles, knocking off their corners and smoothing them. We also know that it was a fast flowing river by the size of the rocks which were able to fall from suspension, out of the flow. Then, over millions of years, the river sediments become the conglomerate rock. Fast forward a few more million years and the conglomerate gets uplifted, cracks form, water seaps through the cracks and erodes the dome shapes we see today, in the middle of the desert. Geological time blows my mind.
And most people are like, 'nice rock, now let's get back to the hotel for the WiFi'